I Need Your Love
by leatherrumandthesea
Summary: Collection of one-shots written during season 5. Ratings may vary, but won't go any higher than T
1. Chapter 1

You Make it Right

Emma had been pacing ever since she returned to her room from Merlin's tower. They were making progress in their search to free the wizard from the tree, but it wasn't progressing fast enough. Her mind has been a maelstrom of conflicting thoughts and emotions over her decision to save Robin. She didn't regret saving him, not even a little. She was still the same person she was before she took on the darkness. She still found human life to be precious. But she had used dark magic to do it, and that was where the conflict arose.

She hated how much she loved the feeling. She had felt powerful, like she was truly in control for the first time in her life. But it brought her closer to accepting the darkness and that was something she still didn't want to do. She had her family to think about. Her parents, Henry, even Regina, in her own way. And Killian.

The knock on her door didn't surprise her, and she knew before she stood to answer it that Killian would be standing on the other side. She had passed him earlier, hoping that a soft smile and the quiet request of her hand on his shoulder would be enough for him to understand her request to come find her. Not that he ever needed much encouragement to follow her.

 _Has anything ever stopped me before?_

She crossed the room to answer, not surprised to find Rumpelstiltskin sitting in the chair she herself had sat in while getting ready for the ball with her mother. He didn't say anything, but the smug grin he wore whenever he turned up was plastered on his face.

She opened the door to find Killian leaning against the frame. His jaw was set with worry and there was a small crease between his eyes, but when her eyes met the endless blue of his, she could still see the love for her he had yet to voice shining through everything else.

"Hey," she said, with a small smile before stepping back to let him in.

"I do hope I'm not intruding, love, I just wanted to check that you were doing alright," he said.

"I'm fine, thank you," she said with a small smile.

Rumpelstiltskin scoffed. "Sure, that's the only reason he came. He just wanted to make sure you hadn't turned into the monster he's always hated."

Emma's demeanor darkened instantly. She knew, deep down, Killian would never think of her as a monster, but that didn't make the words sting any less.

"Do you really think he only has your interests on his mind? He is a selfish pirate after all," the evil voice of the Dark One spoke up from his place across the room.

"Go away," Emma muttered, shooting a glare at the Dark One while still facing Killian.

"Sorry love, I didn't quite catch that," he tries to meet her eyes

"He spent hundreds of years trying to kill the Dark One, do you think he would give up that quest so easily? That he holds no animosity towards you at all?" Rumpelstiltskin pushes further.

"I said go away," she says more firmly

Killian looks taken aback, confused, and a little hurt by the sudden change in her, but turned to leave nonetheless. "If that's what you want, Swan. If you change your mind…"

"No. Please don't go," she says, reaching towards him. "I didn't mean you."

His brow furrows in confusion, but he turns to face her again. "Emma, I know you're struggling with this, and if there is anything at all I can do to help you then tell me and it's done," he says, taking her hand.

Her eyes widen and she looks around the room, only to find the entity of the Dark One has vanished. She lets out a long sigh. "That," she says, raising their hands between them. "I needed that."

Killian tilts his head, smiling at the thought that he was able to help her. She leads him over to sit down next to her on the bed she has no use for and he follows. Now seems as good a time as any to explain the way she's been acting. "I see Gold. Rumpelstiltskin, actually," she muttered, not meeting his eyes

"I'm not sure I follow. Gold is still back in Storybrooke," he said, his thumb still tracing circles over her hand.

"Well it's not actually him. It's the entity of the Dark One itself, only he just appears to me as Gold. He was the one that I was talking to before I healed Robin, and he was the one that was telling me to kill Merida. He shows up and starts saying things to me, putting doubts in my head and sometimes…sometimes I want to just give in just to make him _leave me alone_. But I also want to be rid of this," she says, stopping herself when realizes she's rambling, and looking at him with pleading eyes, begging him to understand and see the real her.

His eyes tell her he does. She's always been that open book to him. "What is he trying to make you doubt?" he asks softly, trying to get her to talk.

"My parents, myself…" she trails off, tearing her eyes away from the blue that begs to know every part of her.

"Me?" he asks. When she nods, he puts his arm around her, their fingers still laced together, the way he did in the sheriff's station all those weeks ago. "Love, is it possible that he's trying to put doubt in your mind because he wants you to doubt me? Because he wants to make it seem possible that I would ever give up fighting for you? Is it possible that he sees me as a threat?"

It's the first time he acknowledges her confession that she loves him. He hasn't brought it up, for which she is grateful, but she has noticed the slightly different way he looks at her. He still looks at her like she is the answer to every question, like she is the beginning and end of his world. Like he loves her. But he also looks at her like he can't believe that she loves him too, as if it's impossible that he could possibly be all those things for her, and it cuts her a little that he would ever feel that way.

"You are definitely a threat to him. You make him go away," she whispers into his chest.

He pulls her tighter to him and presses a kiss into her hair. "How would you feel about getting out of this castle for a bit? A bit of fresh air, change of scenery, just you and me."

She pulls away to meet his eyes, the first genuine smile she's had since the night she saved Robin on her lips. "I'd like that a lot," she whispers.

It might not drive the darkness out completely, being with him. But it makes her forget, just for a short while, that there is a war being waged within her, and he is able to make everything feel right again.


	2. an ocean in your eyes

_I'll show you how to live again, and heal the brokenness within. Let me love you when you come undone_

For weeks after they returned from the Underworld, Emma found it she had trouble sleeping. She knew the primary reason was the status of her relationship with Killian. Honestly, how is it possible to rest when the steady foundation you had built and relied upon was suddenly cracked and burned under your feet? She had done things she regretted and she knew he regretted what he had done. It didn't make it any easier.

Getting back to Storybrooke seemed to make everything more real to him. He shut himself off from her, from everyone, choosing to spend his time wandering by the docks. And in a way, Emma understood the need to be alone. She needed time to reconcile with herself, with Henry, with her parents. She refused to isolate herself from them again, knowing that working to rebuild what she had with Killian would take support and for that she needed her family.

Initially she had thought that she would wait for him to come to her first. To everyone else, he always seemed to fight for them more than she did. Maybe that was why they had doubted how strongly she felt for him. She still saw him around town and with her family, but there was an uncomfortable tension that hadn't existed before. They were trapped in limbo-not exactly separated, but definitely not together.

Eventually it became clear that he wasn't going to make the first move and she should have realized sooner. He always let her make the first move, and she was kicking herself for not realizing it sooner. Knowing him, he was probably thinking she didn't want anything to do with him anymore and shouldering all the blame for everything that had gone wrong.

How had everything gone so wrong?

That was how she found herself seeking him out at the docks a full six weeks after their return from the land of the dead. She found him in the same spot they had sat after she returned with Lily and he had encouraged her to reconcile with her parents. Now she needed to reconcile with him. His head turned in her direction as she approached him.

"Killian can we talk. Please?" she shifted nervously on her feet.

"There's nothing you can say that I haven't already told myself, Swan," he muttered, taking a long drink from his flask.

She moved cautiously forward. "I doubt that," she said, hoping beyond hope that he would give her a chance. "Could we go back to your ship?"

He shrugged and moved to stand. "Why not," his voice was gruff. "I'm out of rum anyway," he murmured, soft enough that she doubted she was meant to hear it. She saw the purple bags under his eyes that rivaled hers and it was only confirmation of everything she had suspected.

He was miserable. He thought she hated him. He felt alone.

She followed behind him, observing the stiff way he walked and his shoulders sagging like they held the weight of the world. He looked like a man being escorted to his execution and she realized how damaged he was by her prolonged absence.

She found her voice when they entered his cabin. "I feel like you need to talk about everything. You know, get everything off your chest," she said as he walked over to his desk and pulled a bottle of rum from one of the drawers.

He took a drink from the bottle and leaned against the desk before setting it with a clank on the wood. "I've spent the last six weeks thinking you wanted nothing to do with me, and then you show up here and what? You want everything to go back to normal?" he scoffed, looking up and meeting her eyes for the first time.

"Killian, I want nothing more than for things to be the way they were between us, but I don't expect that to happen. I just know that I can't keep living like this, I can't keep acting like where we are now doesn't bother me," she pleaded.

He refused to meet her eyes when he spoke again. "I begged you not to turn me into that and you did it anyway. I did things I never would have done otherwise and it feels a lot like you hate me for what you made me into." His tone isn't sharp, but the words cut her any way.

"Are you saying you wouldn't have done the same thing?"

"Of course I would have, Emma. But you're supposed to be better than me, you're supposed to always do the right thing!"

"I can't be this perfect person, Killian. You can't put me on a pedestal and expect more from me than everyone else. Maybe letting you die was the best choice for the greater good, but for once I wasn't fighting for everyone else, I was fighting for me and the man I love," she was almost yelling, tears burning in her eyes. Maybe she had been selfish, but after a lifetime of losing everyone close to her, she wasn't going to lose him.

He froze at her words, his breath stuttering in his chest. "Love. Not loved?" He looked as if he wanted to have hope, but was afraid to.

"Love," she repeated, coming to stand between his legs and run her hands through his hair and offer him a feeble smile.

He closed his eyes at her ministrations his hand coming to cautiously rest on her hip and sighing when she didn't pull away. "After everything I've done…" he whispered

She pressed on, taking what little progress she could get as good news. "I won't lie, it hurts. It hurts a lot, having every flaw you see in yourself thrown in your face like that. But you seem to be forgetting that I know what it's like, to have your love for someone distorted and mangled like that. I know you didn't mean any of those things you said, and I've forgiven you."

"That just makes it worse, because at the root of it all, I did mean them. You pushed me away for so long when all I was doing was trying to love you. I never really dealt with the darkness in my past, only pushed it aside. And you just said so yourself, I hurt you, Emma. Those things I said were horrible and weren't even lies. I don't understand how you could even look at me," he turned his face away from her and her hands fell to his shoulders

Emma stood frozen for a full minute. She had spent so long focusing on how he was there for her and putting aside his own fears and insecurities that she had forgotten to be there for him. His walls were just as high as hers and perhaps even stronger and she hadn't realized.

She took a steadying breath before she spoke again. "Because when I look at you, I see a man who was cursed with darkness and was manipulated by it and managed to fight it off for the second time." She tilted his chin up so he would look her in the eyes. "You broke its hold on you when it tried to hurt me, and if that's not proof of how much you love me then I don't know what is."

"Killian, I regret everything that I did while I was the Dark One, but I can't bring myself to regret saving you. I hate what we've done to each other, but if I had to go through it again so that you could live, I would do it in a heartbeat," she said. "Even if you don't want to be with me anymore, you're alive and that is what's important."

He shook his head in disbelief, as if he couldn't believe what she had said. "Of course I still want to be with you, Emma. The question is why do you want to be with me?"

He looked so broken and it caused an ache to rise in her chest. He honestly believed he was too far gone for them to

"Don't you know, Killian?" she echoed his words to her. "I love you. No matter what you've done."

The tears that had gathered in the corners of his eyes fell and the sight caused the dam to break in her too. Suddenly she couldn't stand the distance between them. She wrapped her arms around his neck and cradled his head to her chest, and his hand hesitantly came to rest at the small of her back before he grasped her tightly to him. His nose pressed into the hollow of her throat and she could feel hot tears on the front of her sweater. She buried her nose in his hair

After both their tears had subsided, she pulled him over so they both lay on the narrow bunk in the corner. Neither one was ready to move forward yet in that aspect of their relationship, but they both needed the closeness.

"Emma, we still have a lot to work through, you know that right?" he whispered, his hand running up her spine to tangle in her hair.

She leaned in and touched her forehead to his, reveling in the fact that they were holding each other again. "I know. But I'd say this is a good first step."

As she was falling asleep, finally able to rest easy, she felt his kiss gentle on her brow. When he spoke, his voice was groggy, on the edge of sleep himself.

"I love you too, Emma. Always."


End file.
